You may have seen this in the news recently: A reform 2 decades in the making, it’s caused outrage among language ‘purists’, and circles partly around the removal of the circumflex accent, that pointy hat symbol, above certain letters if they aren’t making any difference to the sound. It’s even had its own hashtag: #jesuiscirconflexe […]

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From Left to Right: Teresa Watts – Pearly Queen of Clapton, Terry Sadler – Pearly King of Tower Hamlets, Vicky Groves – Pearly Queen of Bow, Lorraine Sadler – Pearly Queen of Tower Hamlets. Since starting up this podcast, I’ve met some brilliant people – and the first episode isn’t even live yet. But a real highlight […]

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How well do you know your Cockney Rhyming Slang? … now see if you made the leaderboard: [mlw_quizmaster_leaderboard mlw_quiz=1] To keep updated on the Finding Voices podcast, and for free accent tips, subscribe to my blog using the box at the top of the page. What’s your favourite Cockney term? Do you know any alternatives […]

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Is Cockney Dead? I spotted this scrawling a while ago on a wall in the East End of London. Now, I have no idea who wrote this – and like many good pieces of graffiti it doesn’t offer any explanation about why exactly it was written. But any current resident of London can, of course, take a good […]

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This is Part 3 of 3 in my series on Active Listening for Accents. In part one we talked about why it is so crucial, and part two delved deep into a very specific vowel combination in the Canadian accent. I also provided some great resources for you to find samples of accents – I’ve […]

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This is Part 2 of 3 in Active Listening for Accents (see Part 1 here). Last time I promised more of a specific example of active listening when learning an accent, and the sounds you can notice hidden beneath the surface. We’ll explore an example of that, and the kind of issues it brings up […]

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So you probably realise the Australians don’t call out “G’day Bruce!” at every given opportunity. And you know the Irish don’t sing, “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!” while river-dancing in green coats. But how much are stereotypes still sticking to your brain when you try and learn a new accent? A recent article on […]